tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78700132018-03-10T09:21:46.571-08:00Rob Frankel - Branding ExpertRob Frankel has been called "the best branding expert on the planet."Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.comBlogger213125http://www.robfrankel.com/AnimRob4.gifblogspot/gjhchttps://feedburner.google.comThis is Rob Frankel's XML content feed, usually having to do with branding. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site.tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-18760360562542617382018-03-10T09:21:00.001-08:002018-03-10T09:21:46.587-08:00The Coolidge EffectOn the advice that "those who don't learn their history are condemned to repeat it," my favorite reading is biographies. I figure that knowing about people throughout history -- their successes and failures -- along with the recurrent phases of human behavior allow one to accurately predict what's just over our own horizon. &nbsp;As with my wildly unpopular assertion in 2015 of <a href="http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2015/07/political-brands-2016-donald-trump.html" target="_blank">Donald Trump's chances of election</a>, lots of my opinions and observations turn out to be correct.<br /><br />Believe me, it's not because I'm some psychic or genius. I just pay attention.<br /><br />Reading the biography of Calvin Coolidge seems to be especially timely. &nbsp;Most people, including most Americans, know little or nothing about Coolidge. &nbsp;In fact, he was the 29th Vice President of the United States in 1920, who became the 30th President in 1923 when President Warren Harding died in the White House. Coolidge won re-election in 1924, serving more than five years as the nation's chief executive.<br /><br />Other than one clean joke about his being a man of few words, nobody remembers much about Calvin Coolidge's presidency. &nbsp;That's probably because what made him a nationally popular hero is what happened to him&nbsp;<i>before</i> he ever sought national office.<br /><br />It happened in 1919, just after the first world war, when the globe was wrapped up in political instability. All over the planet, monarchies and kingdoms were giving way to industrialized republics, redrawing maps and changing governmental structures that had been in power for centuries, causing mass confusion. &nbsp;It's no coincidence, for example, that the Russian revolution succeeded in 1917: As Machiavelli once noted, "the quickest ascension to power is through a vacuum." &nbsp;By 1919, the success of Communism was a very real threat to the United States, especially with the Boston Police Strike of that year.<br /><br />Coolidge was governor of Massachusetts at the time, faced with the dilemma of handling a breakdown of law and order of unprecedented proportion. &nbsp;Although the police were forbidden by law from striking, they walked out anyway, figuring they had the public's support. &nbsp;After all, the mood of the city was one of agitation, inspired by the newfound power enjoyed by Socialist and Communist labor unions throughout Europe and beyond. <br /><br />The entire strike lasted about a week, throwing Boston into chaos and making national headlines. Despite the media's&nbsp;<i>perceived</i>&nbsp;sentiment leaning in favor of the striking policemen, Coolidge decided that the beyond the policemen's sworn and moral obligation to protect the public, the law was the law: Coolidge&nbsp;called in the militia and not only fired all the strikers, he guaranteed none would ever be re-hired by the Boston police under any circumstance.<br /><br />Warned by pundits that his actions would be deemed politically unpopular by the public, Coolidge's decision to sustain law and order were actually enthusiastically endorsed by voters across the country. Firemen, telephone operators, nurses and coal miners who had been tempted to walk off their jobs, backed off their threats. It was the first instance in which the phrase "silent majority" was applied to those whose opinions and votes weren't even mentioned by the media. &nbsp;Upon realizing their error, most media quickly changed their tunes and endorsed Coolidge as a true, solid leader. Real presidential material.<br /><br />That was 1919. This is 2018.<br /><br />Look around the planet. &nbsp;As of this writing, lawlessness abounds. Apartheid is worse than ever in South Africa, only now it's the whites who are feeling the pain of state-sponsored robbery and murder. &nbsp;The white population is now warning of violent rebellion against their corrupt black oppressors -- and they have the resources to back up their threats. &nbsp;Check out the tension of European countries as they wring their hands over the continuing decay of their own customs and disciplines. &nbsp;Watch how many South American countries drown in their own lawless poverty.<br /><br />As I <a href="http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-french-canary.html" target="_blank">warned in 2017</a>, it's only a matter of time until the lawlessness we're seeing -- on the same international scale seen by Coolidge a hundred years ago -- erupts into full scale conflict. My thesis that now, as then, the silent majority will again support leaders who can and will buck the media's advocacy of lawlessness, choosing a return to law and order. &nbsp;The United States, Hungary, Poland and Italy have just weighed in; I suspect more are on the way.<br /><br />It won't come cheaply. The media will likely accuse those leaders of unbridled nationalism and worse. Real people are going to bleed and die in the streets. History, however, will undoubtedly report the ultimate return to stability as one more natural diversion in the course of human history, the periodic purge that cleanses the system, followed by a period of worldwide prosperity.<br /><br />Just like it did after Coolidge.<div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/rIKv6EcuaY4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-coolidge-effect.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-66642831052046963702018-01-27T08:14:00.003-08:002018-01-27T08:14:34.990-08:00Future ImperfectA lot of people use the quote "Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it," attributing it to 19th/20th century Mexican General George Santayana, which is all well and good until, ironically, a little research reveals the phrase formally originated with British statesman Edmund Burke back in the 18th century.<br /><br />Funny how those things happen.<br /><br />Regardless, the sentiment is as true as it is profound. You really can't tell where you're going until you know where you've been. &nbsp;Everyone needs a point of reference, which is why if you're intelligent enough to be reading this, you should be frightened to death of the Millennial generation's inheriting the earth.<br /><br />Seriously.<br /><br />Hear me out on this, because this is <i>not</i> the usual rant of some troglodyte bemoaning the loss of his traditions of romance and exotic nobility. This is a guy who calls 'em like he sees 'em, and what he sees is unlike anything anyone has witnessed in the course of western civilization:<br /><br />Millennials are the first generation whose future is compromised not just by its lack of education, but by a complete lack of interest in its own history.<br /><br />Go ahead and ask any Millennial about the Age of Reason. The Renaissance. The Dark Ages. The Middle Ages. The Industrial Revolution. The Age of Enlightenment. &nbsp;See if he can explain Greeks and Trojans as anything other than college fraternities with the best parties. Then watch for his two reactions:<br /><br />1. &nbsp;A glazed look in his eyes.<br />2. &nbsp;A grab for his iPhone to Google it.<br /><br />I'm not even going into the catastrophic impact that "information" services like Google and others practice by distorting their search results via their own personal and political agenda. If you really want to delve into what mind control is all about, you can read all the George Orwell and Aldous Huxley you please.<br /><br />No, the <i>real</i> issue lies in the fact that for the first time in history, education (or what's left of it) is undergoing a lethal, quiet transformation from an <i>active</i> to a <i>reactive</i> process.<br /><br />The broad acceptance of simply "looking it up" or "Googling it" is, by its very nature, displacing the centuries-proven alternative of <i>active</i>&nbsp;education, whose essence echoes Burke's and Santayana's very own sentiments. &nbsp;Simply put, by the time a Millennial <i>responds</i>&nbsp;to new information (which itself may be wrong) it's likely too late to be of any real value. &nbsp;By knowing one's history, however, that same Millennial could walk the earth prepared by his education because he took the time to learn it before he needed it.<br /><br />But you can't know anything unless you ask about it, and fewer kids -- now past minimum voting age -- even bother with asking. It just doesn't occur to them to do so. So what we're left with is an army of drones doing just what they're told by their masters to do without question.<br /><br />That, to me, is scary.<br /><br />Human tragedy like wars and poverty are avoided with prior knowledge, not ignorance. &nbsp;The civilized world is made a better place by remembering how bad things once were. The problem with Millennials is that they have no knowledge of their past, only fantasies of their futures, most of which have/will never materialize. &nbsp;The sad part is that like lambs to the slaughter, they have no way of knowing it, and no desire to question it.<br /><br />I always told my kids (and anyone else who'd listen) to talk back to the TV. &nbsp;Yell at YouTube. Choose your own drive for knowledge over the toxic fumes generated by search engines. &nbsp;I stressed that the first twenty years of life is mostly lies and that it takes a good few years beyond your last year of schooling to exchange infantile idealism for life's harsh lessons in reality. &nbsp;That's where the value of history is: A record of truth stretching back eons, there for anyone to learn from, to avoid making the mistakes made by others and to improve their own lots as a result.<br /><br />It's a tried and true system, assuming that anyone's interested in asking. &nbsp;And sadly, that's an assumption we can no longer afford to make.<br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/BD5E89IVGIk" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2018/01/future-imperfect.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-77368816407268617962017-12-07T12:45:00.001-08:002017-12-07T12:45:17.699-08:00Meg Whitman 2.0Back in 2015, I went on record -- to everyone's laughter -- with <a href="http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2015/07/political-brands-2016-donald-trump.html" target="_blank">my favoring Donald Trump's chances of becoming President of the United States</a>. Nobody's laughing now, however, which is one more reason why I so enjoy writing these posts. &nbsp;This time, I've dug back to 2009, when to nobody's surprise, <a href="http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2009/02/meg-whitmans-losing-bid.html" target="_blank">I pummeled tech CEO Meg Whitman for her clumsy losing bid to become governor of the state of California.</a><br /><br />Despite spending over $150 million of her personal billion-dollar fortune, <a href="http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2009/10/meg-whitman-stumbles-again.html" target="_blank">Whitman got crushed by bad handlers and Jerry Brown's measly $35 million effort.</a> It would have been laughable were it not so pathetic. Whitman bungled every step of her way to the loser's shed, camping on the wrong side of each issue while crusading as one of the most antipathetic candidates in the state's history. &nbsp;Her trail of scorched earth through Disney, Hasbro, DreamWorks and Ebay didn't exactly rally the forces of Silicon Valley to her cause. Neither did Gloria Allred's last minute lawsuit on behalf of Whitman's "abusive" employment of an undocumented alien in her own home.<br /><br />But that was then. This is now.<br /><br />In November, 2017, after nine years at its helm, Whitman quietly stepped down from her perch at Hewlett-Packard with little fanfare. It was a voluntary move that hardly went noticed, which can mean only one of three things:<br /><br />1. She's terminally ill.<br />2. She's got another gig.<br />3. She's eyeing another run for the governor's seat.<br /><br />I'm confident that at age 61, Whitman's health is just fine. If anything, her recent photographs reflect a new, more vibrant image than her past images that made her look more like Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958. Someone is <i>finally</i> giving this woman media advice -- possibly for a reason. <br /><br />I'm also not convinced that her "announcement" about buying into an MLS expansion team is anything more than a cover for her real agenda: the team she's reportedly buying is, not so coincidentally, based in Sacramento. Just a stone's throw from her would-be office.<br /><br />All of which points to Option #3, which makes a whole lot of sense, for a whole lot of reasons.<br /><br />As Steve Bannon recently advised a group of Republicans in an Orange County speech, "you guys got everything you need" to produce the same results in California that his team produced nationally for Donald Trump. People, money, effort and a purpose -- everything else is just icing on the cake.<br /><br />More to the point, the <i>timing</i>&nbsp;is right. In the first place, Donald Trump proved that one person really can take on an entrenched system and win. He made believers out of a country that previously had given up its government as hopeless. Secondly, Hillary Clinton may have lost the election, but in her own way, advanced and encouraged the potential of women's gains in much the same way as Trump did for his platform. &nbsp;Third, the Harvey Weinstein Syndrome wreaked havoc in a very public way, and by all accounts, will continue to reverberate and vilify men throughout the election year, especially when the top two Democrats contenders, Gavin Newsom and Antonio&nbsp;Villaraigosa, are on public record as lifelong womanizers.<br /><br />For those of you who don't reside in California, let me add three more ingredients to the mix:<br /><br />1. &nbsp;While it's not politically or socially acceptable to do so, an increasing number of Californians -- at least those outside of San Francisco -- are getting tired of dealing with the costs and crimes of illegal immigrants. Off the record, far more people -- including legal immigrants -- prefer Trump's wall to be built sooner rather than later.<br /><br />2. &nbsp;The new Federal Tax Reform plan hits high-income, high-tax states like New York and California particularly hard, because it no longer allows those residents to deduct their 11% state income taxes from their Federal tax returns. &nbsp;Ouch. That means more people will likely vote for lower taxes and less government.<br /><br />3. &nbsp;While everyone accuses Republicans of representing the rich, by far, the bulk of the "let's have the government spend more" sentiment is being attributed to Democrats, whose public perception is deteriorating faster than the chances of cashing an expired food stamp at a liquor store.<br /><br />Put them all together and this branding guy sees a big picture in which the right woman at the right time -- this time with all the right answers -- could upset the Democratic stranglehold that's been killing California. <br /><br />That woman could be Meg Whitman, assuming of course, that this time Whitman's maid has a valid Social Security number.<div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/NWgtrL6YdvU" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2017/12/meg-whitman-20.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-2820833084129992802017-11-30T10:24:00.003-08:002017-12-05T20:57:55.565-08:00Misunderstanding Nazis<div class="p1">Anyone who knows me also knows how much I've enjoyed the last year or two here in the United States. I tell young people to pay attention, because these are historic times that won't reoccur any time soon. There hasn't been a "world order" shake-up like this since the turn of the twentieth century, when most of the world's monarchies were displaced by republics in a relatively short number of years.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Of course, not too many people know their history, so they know nothing about that previous shake-up. Millennials know even less, because they simply accept whatever answers Google retrieves as the gospel truth. Revisionist academics seem intent on censoring, altering and filtering historical facts, patting them into place in an effort to fit the world comfortably to their own agenda.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Unfortunately, the truth has a funny way of surfacing all by itself. It's happening as we speak. This time, it's with Nazis.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">I spend my time observing from the sidelines, where I can't help but laugh at everyone calling anyone with whom they disagree a Nazi. These are, by and large, the same people who are offended by everything and seek to limit your personal freedoms in order to quell their own inadequacies. But I'm not here to preach. You already know all that stuff.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Here's something you might<i> not</i> know:</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">If you talk to the people who really know what Nazism is about, you'll find them to be strong advocates of an open, limitless society. &nbsp;These are incredibly tolerant people, accepting anything other than limits on their -- and your -- personal freedoms. These are<i> not</i> people who majored in sociology and political science. They're<i> not</i> academics isolated in their university ivory towers. Nor are they uneducated marchers with smart phones in hand.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">No, the folks I'm talking about have<i> real</i>&nbsp;Nazi experiences.&nbsp;These are the true authorities on what Nazis are.&nbsp;They're&nbsp;<i>holocaust survivors</i>.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Most of them are dying off now, but not before they've told and recorded their experiences for posterity. Were it not so tragic, it's almost amusing to hear some twenty-something rant about Nazis within earshot of an elder victim who watched her entire family shot to death in her own home or wither away from starvation in a death camp for no reason other than who and what they were.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">They've had decades to suffer with the memories and the loss, as opposed to an uneducated, uninformed and wholly unrealistic generation of kids -- including those forty-somethings suffering from their own chronic condition of prolonged adolescence -- who have convinced themselves they really know what Nazism is all about.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">They do not. One viewing of<i> Schindler's List</i>&nbsp;or<i> Sophie's Choice</i>&nbsp;doesn't speak to the real life experiences of those whose lives were destroyed in Europe, only to be rebuilt under the aegis of American freedom. &nbsp;That's why virtually all holocaust survivors have defected from the left to wholeheartedly embrace and protect the freedoms that saved their very souls.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Personally, I love it when I hear people calling other folks Nazis. The uneducated are so easy to defeat. And that's not just my opinion. &nbsp;As history notes, it was certified by a national vote in 2016.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><br /><div class="p1">Let's see them try to rewrite that.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/fxgxRNy83tw" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2017/11/misunderstanding-nazis.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-8863295775516418802017-10-04T08:45:00.002-07:002017-10-04T08:45:28.595-07:00The Tech MeltdownNot everyone agrees with what I write here. In fact, whenever I opine about things, most of the reactions are of the pooh-pooh variety, pummeling me with posts about how far off the mark I am. I know I see things playing out politically, socially or economically, but that's because I view them through a different lens. Every once in a while, though, some of my most fervent critics will return to admit my analysis was correct, albeit a tad premature.<br /><br />This may be one of those times. So tighten your chinstrap. You may not agree with what's coming.<br /><br />At the time of this writing, the current national pastime seems to be the undermining of anything having to do with Donald Trump, both personally and professionally. The facts notwithstanding, an ever-shrinking contingent is still protesting pointlessly, although nobody seems to know about what. The entire "progressive" left seems to be riding on momentum now, fueled by their bitterness left over from their losses in the 2016 election. It hasn't much longer to live, however, as Trump's rising economic tide is indeed lifting all boats: Even the most vocal protesters are spending more time watching their 401Ks grow and less time whining about it.<br /><br />If you're a student of history -- real history, not the revisionist stuff that tears down statues and builds bathrooms dedicated to gender confusion -- you can see that Trump's recovery and reconstruction efforts are working even faster than Ronald Reagan's did during his first term. When Reagan was saddled with repairing the widespread damage done by Jimmy Carter, it took him two full years before the country could begin to feel the ship being righted. In less than nine months after his inauguration, Trump is already way ahead of Reagan's schedule, with just about all sectors of the economy up and improving -- and feeling it. &nbsp;That's all good news. One sector, however, is likely to head south, and even though nobody wants to hear about it, I'm here to tell you:<br /><br />The Tech Meltdown is coming -- and way sooner than you think.<br /><br />Tech giants like Apple, Google, Amazon and even newcomers like Snapchat and other tech-based ventures are completely out of step with what's happening in America. Sure, they're huge and well capitalized. But that's the result of decades of a lackluster economy, when nothing was happening and nobody had any reason to invest in anything else. Decades of malaise instilled the notion that <i>innovation and technology</i>&nbsp;were the future, and millions of boomers and millennials bought into it.<br /><br />That's all changing.<br /><br />Of course it's not fashionable to &nbsp;say it, but America has always been, and likely will always be, an <i>industrial</i>&nbsp;economy. That's not to say that services and technology don't have their places. But industry and manufacturing have always been the engines powering our progress. &nbsp;You can see it happen now, if you know where to look. Energy, defense, manufacturing and all of their ancillary industries have soared in value -- and real business orders -- since Trump was sworn in. &nbsp;Don't take my word for it. Check your own stock ticker to see who's up and who's not. Look at GDP rates and <i>real</i>&nbsp;unemployment figures.<br /><br />All the needles are pointing in the right direction -- <i>and tech has nothing to do with it.</i><br /><br />Now that the market has more <i>real</i> options to invest in&nbsp;<i>real</i> companies with <i>real</i> products that pay <i>real</i> dividends and offer <i>real</i> growth, the two decade illusory-yet-unfulfilled promises of tech are becoming increasingly vulnerable. Dark concerns about Apple's built-in obsolescence, Google's omnipotent disregard for privacy and Amazon's anti-trust behavior only add to the mix. &nbsp;The Silicon Valley venture model of pumping and dumping short-lived, valueless propositions is just as unsustainable. As the internet bubble once taught us, corporate hubris takes you only so far.<br /><br />That's why the glory days of tech are over. It's only a matter of time until the big selloff hits.<br /><br />That's the bad news. The good news is that it may just be the ticket to make Bay Area real estate affordable again.<div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/4OyK8lYggIM" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-tech-meltdown.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-61897832332413736182017-08-17T08:34:00.003-07:002017-08-17T08:40:19.912-07:00Cracking The Internet LensIf you were born after 1990, you and I are not the same. We're very different, because you've never experienced what life is like during a healthy economy. You've never known a time when optimism was a way of life. And as <a href="http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2014/07/small-is-stupid.html" target="_blank">I wrote a while back</a>, you've been taught to make do with what little you have rather than building your life into something bigger and better.<br /><br />That's too bad. Because there's still plenty of opportunity out there. It's just that you wouldn't know it because you've spent your life viewing it through the Internet Lens.<br /><br />Before you dismiss this as some older guy's rant about politics, forget it. That's not what I'm ranting about at all. &nbsp;Besides, you get enough of that with your latté and morning bran muffin. A more appropriate consideration would be what the internet has done to irreversibly harm the market for collectibles, those once-rare items ranging from knick-knacks to cars that could only be discovered after hundreds of hours hunting.<br /><br />Weren't expecting <i>that</i>, were you?<br /><br />Collectibles, especially rare ones, aren't that tough to find any more, of course. Now you can discover just about anything you want, anywhere in the world, with a simple point and click. As a result of the internet, what was once considered rare might not actually be as elusive as once thought. It's that way with collectibles and it turns out it's that way with humans, as well.<br /><br />Before the web, people who lived in the shadows and margins of humanity felt alone and isolated, usually closeted and/or shunned by the conformity of pre-internet society. Each one felt as alone and as rare as a double-struck nickel. After 1998, however, that all started to change, as the internet did what it does best, making it easier to find rare specimens -- human or otherwise -- were not quite as rare as they'd thought.<br /><br />When you take three giant steps back to see the big picture, you will find people and postage stamps are not that dissimilar. In fact, they are perfect examples of life through the Internet Lens, where much of what we see, hear and view is -- by the nature of the Internet Lens itself -- skewed by the views and values of those most motivated to use the internet to discover those more like themselves.<br /><br />And that's why anyone expecting any kind of impartial, politically-agnostic content would be massively disappointed in their hunt for objectivity. While the internet provides a <i>platform</i>&nbsp;for all to present their views, it's only those who are <i>motivated</i> to connect with others -- usually in an attempt to confirm their own self-interest -- who actually do so.<br /><br />It doesn't matter if you're extreme on the left or the right or possess an ardent passion for chickens. In fact, it doesn't matter what you think or do. All that matters is that you're motivated enough to send out the call to connect with those as rare as yourself, while the rest of us conformists merely sit and endure the absence of any refutation of your views. The result is an illusory reality that is absolutely skewed by special interests -- but not by the usual cast of multi-national, corporate villains. These special interests have their own agenda and it's not at all like yours.<br /><br />Welcome to life through the Internet Lens: Where rare is represented as normal, no matter how abnormal it actually may be.<br /><br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/gIy5TFH7G6Q" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2017/08/cracking-internet-lens.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-49479385646452131482017-07-01T08:19:00.001-07:002017-07-01T08:38:01.261-07:00Easy To Be HardI have no idea why science fiction writers exert so much energy on fantasies about time machines when all it really takes to be launched into another age is a decades-old hit playing on the radio. &nbsp;In this particular case, I was tootling down the highway when I was ambushed by a major hit from the sixties musical <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_(musical)" target="_blank">Hair</a></i>&nbsp;entitled <i>Easy to be Hard.</i><br /><i><br /></i>Although the show was a big hit on Broadway (and even a a movie), the big money was its soundtrack, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrD14jqTtAE" target="_blank">this version by <i>Three Dog Night</i>&nbsp;</a>commanded American airwaves for months. &nbsp;For those of you who never saw/heard about the show, it was the first major production to convey all the issues of the hippie counter-culture to mainstream America. It caused a big commotion, and was made even more popular by the fact that -- for the first time ever and as a challenge to censorship laws -- it featured one scene in which the actors on stage appeared completely naked.<br /><br />Yeah. That was way before <i>PornHub</i>.<br /><br />Back then, most people thought&nbsp;<i>Hair</i>&nbsp;was just about hippies, a 90 minute glimpse of the long-haired, free love mind set. &nbsp;Today, however, the show -- and especially the song itself -- have taken on an eerie new significance. Keep in mind that the hippies of the sixties preached gospels of love, tolerance and universal acceptance, yet as the show points out, in practice, they could be just as capable of cruelty and intolerance as those against whom they protested. Hundreds of hippies could march together against the cold, oppressive, unfeeling Establishment while simultaneously ignoring the personal pain of the confused adolescents marching right there with them. &nbsp;<i>Easy to be Hard</i>&nbsp;sums up the dissonance perfectly, with a melody just as haunting:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>How can people have no feelings<br />How can they ignore their friends<br />Easy to be proud<br />Easy to say no<br /> <br />Especially people who care about strangers<br />Who care about evil and social injustice<br />Do you only care about the bleeding crowd<br />How about a needy friend<br />I need a friend<br /><br />How can people be so heartless<br />You know I'm hung up on you<br />Easy to be proud<br />Easy to say no</i></blockquote>Now, a new millennium reveals that the grandchildren of America's hippies are just as self-absorbed and unfeeling as their grandparents were. Every day, mainstream America is subjected to the whines and rants of professional victims, clamoring for the rights and privileges of ever-emerging minorities while viciously savaging their neighbors and just about anyone from whom they differ.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Gay, trans, lesbian, queer, black, brown, feminist, PETA and the rest -- you name 'em, they hate you and seem to have no problem spewing bile toward you while demanding unconditional acceptance for themselves. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with various groups' self-advancement. I do, however, have a big problem when they preach love while swinging a baseball bat at the heads of those who differ from them.</div><div><br /></div><div>The last few years has allowed social and not-so-social media to rack up endless clips of social justice warriors' attacking anyone, anywhere -- and usually for no clear reason at all. &nbsp;It can't be doing too much good, other than pointing out the very obvious:</div><div><br /></div><div>The sixties may be gone, but human hypocrisy, apparently, is timeless.&nbsp;</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/isGpzNquupA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2017/07/easy-to-be-hard.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-72573092392764927142017-06-05T10:37:00.002-07:002017-06-05T10:37:21.148-07:00Islam 442<div class="tr_bq">In case you haven't noticed, there's been a lot of hand-wringing over how the world should be handling the issue of radical islamic terrorism. &nbsp;I've noticed it, too. &nbsp;I'm probably just as frustrated as anyone who wants to rid the world of a true global plague. Watching national leaders on every side of the problem do little more than issue public statements of condemnation "is the very strongest terms" just isn't cutting it.</div><br />Hey, I'm just a branding guy. A strategist. So whenever I see a problem, my first reaction is to suggest some sort of a workable solution or at least ask the right questions. &nbsp;Some days, a brand strategy is all it takes to turn a business around. &nbsp;Other days, the same kind of strategy is all it takes to turn a <i>political</i>&nbsp;situation around. &nbsp;After all, brand strategy is all about human behavior, and as long as we're influencing the human decision-making process, its principles can work almost anywhere -- including combatting radical muslim terrorism.<br /><br />If you know your history, you need not look too far to find a real, tenable solution to the problem -- only you'd have to look <i>the right place to find it</i>. &nbsp;In this case, you might want to take a look at the 442nd Regiment Combat Team of the second world war:<br /><br /><blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.4px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em;">The&nbsp;<b>442nd Regimental Combat Team</b>&nbsp;is an&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantry" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Infantry">infantry</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regiment" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Regiment">regiment</a>&nbsp;of the&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="United States Army">United States Army</a>, part of the&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Reserve" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="United States Army Reserve">Army Reserve</a>. The regiment was a fighting unit composed almost entirely of&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisei" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Nisei">American soldiers of Japanese ancestry</a>&nbsp;(mostly from Hawaii) who fought in&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="World War II">World War II</a>. Most of the families of mainland Japanese Americans were confined to&nbsp;<a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Japanese American internment">internment camps</a>&nbsp;in the United States interior. Beginning in 1944, the regiment fought primarily in&nbsp;<a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Theatre_of_World_War_II" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="European Theatre of World War II">Europe</a>&nbsp;during World War II,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-GlobalSecurity_2-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)#cite_note-GlobalSecurity-2" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;">[2]</a></sup>&nbsp;in particular<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Campaign_(World_War_II)" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Italian Campaign (World War II)">Italy</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dragoon" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Operation Dragoon">southern France</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Allied_invasion_of_Germany" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Western Allied invasion of Germany">Germany</a>.<br />The 442nd Regiment was the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in the history of American warfare.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-United_States_Army_3-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)#cite_note-United_States_Army-3" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;">[3]</a></sup>The 4,000 men who initially made up the unit in April 1943 had to be replaced nearly 2.5 times. In total, about 14,000 men served, earning 9,486&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Heart" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Purple Heart">Purple Hearts</a>. The unit was awarded eight&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Unit_Citation_(United_States)" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Presidential Unit Citation (United States)">Presidential Unit Citations</a>&nbsp;(five earned in one month).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Asahina2007_4-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)#cite_note-Asahina2007-4" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;">[4]</a></sup><sup class="reference" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;">:201</sup>&nbsp;Twenty-one of its members were awarded&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Medal of Honor">Medals of Honor</a>.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-GlobalSecurity_2-1" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)#cite_note-GlobalSecurity-2" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;">[2]</a></sup>&nbsp;Its motto was "Go for Broke".</blockquote><br />The above <i>Wikileaks</i> summary gives you a good idea of what Japanese, Italian and German Americans were up against when they were relocated into internment camps as part of the American war defense. &nbsp;It was not a pretty time, but the reaction of each group tells a remarkably similar story: <br /><br />While they were innocent victims, Japanese, Italian and German Americans took it upon themselves to prove their character by taking up arms against the very people from whom they descended. If you've ever read the chilling accounts of the 442 in Italy -- overtaking Nazi positions thought impenetrable -- there's no doubt of what true American heroism is about.<br /><br />It doesn't get more convincing -- or effective -- than that. So I guess the big question here is where is the&nbsp;<i>muslim</i>&nbsp;442?<br /><br />We live in an age of super media, where data and publicity zip around the world far faster than they did in 1944. &nbsp;News travels in seconds instead of weeks. &nbsp;Given Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and every other social medium, it seems the muslim world could do itself a lot of good if it enlisted its own on behalf of its western friends.<br /><br />Let me be clear: Cultural and racist issues against Japanese, Italian and German Americans didn't suddenly stop after the second world war. But less than a decade later, their situations were greatly improved, and our enemies were vanquished, thanks largely to the 442 and the like.<br /><br />History provides all the lessons we need. &nbsp;It's just a question if anyone really wants to learn them.<div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/z8fwagA0x0Q" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2017/06/islam-442.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-70798055513133246962017-05-15T10:02:00.001-07:002017-05-19T08:19:28.673-07:00The French CanaryI have my political views. You have your political views. &nbsp;For a minute, put them aside for the sake of some pure, staggering, strategic analysis. &nbsp;This could be historic, so buckle in.<br /><br />Look, I'm a brand strategist, so I'm more concerned with <i>why things happen,</i>&nbsp;on the theory that if you understand <i>why</i> things happen, you're better prepared for <i>when</i> they happen. &nbsp;If you're really good, you can also get an accurate picture of <i>what's going to happen</i>, which comes in handy, too. &nbsp;My work tends to stay in the commercial sector, but make no mistake: &nbsp;Branding is about making decisions, wherever those decisions are made. &nbsp;So as long as humans are choosing their actions, the forces at work in purchase decisions will remain very much like the ones influencing social and political events.<br /><br />Which brings us to France.<br /><br />At the time of this writing, France has just inaugurated its youngest president in history. &nbsp;That's not important. Two thirds of the French vote carried the center-left Mr. Macron into office, sending the right-leaning Ms. LePen to defeat. &nbsp;There's no doubt that Ms. LePen had a serious branding problem, but that's not important, either.<br /><br />Here's what <i>is</i> important:<br /><br />Starting in June, 2016, the world has witnessed profound growth in anti-globalist sentiment. &nbsp;It began with BREXIT and -- regardless of social media hash tags to the contrary -- continued with the ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States. &nbsp;Social media like Facebook and Twitter is rife with malcontents who post memes and videos espousing the dangers of unrestricted immigration. &nbsp;In the past year, Sweden has become the poster child for increases in crime, while Hungary and Poland are being heralded for their own zero tolerance policies.<br /><br />Clearly, the battle lines are being drawn all over the world. But it's France that tells the real story.<br /><br />Two decades ago, LePen's National Front party was barely a blip on the radar. Two weeks ago, it registered roughly 30% of the national French vote -- and that's just the <i>official</i>&nbsp;tally: &nbsp;That doesn't include those who were sympathetic to LePen, but simply couldn't bring themselves to vote for her.<br /><br />So now, France -- a country not well-known for its tolerance of non-white, non-Christian cultures -- has a major portion of her population reaching its boiling point. &nbsp;Once known as the City of Lights, Paris has become a checkerboard of dark, impoverished ghettos where sharia law prevents the enforcement of French civil law. &nbsp;The French are witnessing first-hand the degradation that social media has been blaring &nbsp;about for the last few years -- and they don't like it one bit. &nbsp;<i>That's </i>the significance of LePen's recent advances.<br /><br />But there's more.<br /><br />Nothing angers a mob -- especially throngs of Frenchmen -- more than being ignored by elitist rulers. It bothered the people of France enough in 1789 to start chopping off their own rulers' heads. &nbsp;Now, with their civil remedies, elections and laws proving ineffective, it's not all that unlikely that we'll begin seeing Frenchmen take to the streets, going to those places where no French civil or military authority dare go.<br /><br />Historically, "having run out of viable options" is what propels civil unrest movements, which often have a knack for turning violent. &nbsp;So it shouldn't come as a surprise if/when France's white, unemployed working class -- in response to its tone-deaf government -- decides to take matters into its own hands. &nbsp;Call it the Timothy McVeigh Syndrome, as multi-story residential tenements in Paris's immigrant neighborhoods begin collapsing in heaps of bomb-blasted rubble, each episode empowering the anti-immigrant movement on to its next attack.<br /><br />The predictable reaction would be Macron sending in the French militia to restore order, which would backfire as social media portrays the action as "the French government favoring immigrants over its own citizens." &nbsp;In the business, we call that a "PR disaster." &nbsp;In the real world, we call it a precursor to civil war.<br /><br />And <i>that's</i>&nbsp;why France is worth watching. &nbsp;She's the canary in the European coal mine.<br /><br />Okay, so that's one scenario and I'm just a branding guy. It could happen. &nbsp;It might not. &nbsp;But then, calculating the possibilities what I get paid for -- even when those possibilities aren't especially nice.<div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/jjeENqExEpk" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com1http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-french-canary.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-50932731363923183602017-04-17T18:01:00.001-07:002017-04-17T18:11:28.230-07:00Changing Your MindIt's a lot of fun being young. &nbsp;You can drink til all hours and still get up for work. &nbsp;You can be in shape without ever going to the gym. &nbsp;You also get to passionately criticize everything since you own very little and have even less to lose. &nbsp;You can be a socialist, a communist, a Democrat or a Republican. &nbsp;You can support Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Paul Ryan or Donald Trump. &nbsp;It doesn't matter: <br /><br />If things improve, you get to enjoy it. &nbsp;If things get worse, you still haven't lost, because you were never invested in the first place. <br /><br />Being young with no skin in the game is like when an online equities trader lets you practice trading stocks without using real money. &nbsp;It's not <i>your</i> money. &nbsp;It's all a big game. &nbsp;And as long as you can get by, you're just fine.<br /><br />Of course, that philosophy only works while you're <i>genuinely young</i>. &nbsp;It doesn't work so well for Baby Boomers with families or their unemployed offspring, both of whom suffer from genuinely prolonged adolescence. &nbsp;No matter which capital letter sociologists have slapped on to your particular generation, the fact is that more than ever before, we exist in a Nation of Children, where everyone ages but nobody matures.<br /><br />I've ranted about this before <a href="http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2014/07/small-is-stupid.html" target="_blank">in other blogs</a>, but there's one aspect of maturity that seems to have slipped through the cracks: &nbsp;The ability to change your mind.<br /><br />Somewhere along the line, the media and various socially retarded organizations have issued an edict that nobody anywhere, at any time, is permitted to change his opinion for any reason. &nbsp;Consistency, they argue, is a sign of virtue and stalwart character. &nbsp;I submit to you it's just the opposite. &nbsp;As Ralph Waldo Emerson eloquently stated, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," meaning that consistency for its own sake is, well, kind of stupid.<br /><br />Stick with me for a few more paragraphs on this. &nbsp;You'll like it.<br /><br />To succeed in life, you have to adapt to its constant changes, which means there's very little that doesn't require periodic re-evaluation. &nbsp;Just because something worked like a charm before doesn't mean it has the same chance of succeeding again now. &nbsp;Think I'm wrong? &nbsp;Try selling eight track tapes or touring the streets of Tehran. &nbsp;Good ideas back in the seventies. &nbsp;Now, not so much.<br /><br />If life evolves, then it only makes sense for our opinions, values and tactics to evolve right along with it. &nbsp;I see this everywhere. &nbsp;When I question my client's methods and tactics, they frequently answer with puzzled responses like, "But we've <i>always</i>&nbsp;done it that way." &nbsp;To which I usually answer, "Yes, but that's why you're failing now. What you're doing no longer works."<br /><br />Easy enough to accept in a business environment, but for some reason, not so easy to accept in the <i>political</i> sphere. &nbsp;Whether you like him or not, Donald Trump is the first president that actually understands the concept of <i>evolution</i>, and that consistency for its own sake yields nothing more than <i>predictability</i>. &nbsp;It's also the basis for making bad decisions when you consider that the world is not at all like it was five, ten or fifty years ago.<br /><br />Look around your own world. &nbsp;What <i>hasn't</i>&nbsp;changed in your own life in the past four years? &nbsp;Ten years? &nbsp;Since your childhood? &nbsp;My money says that far more <i>has</i> changed than hasn't, that your own life would be hobbled and that you would be paralyzed were you not able to jettison or alter your old opinions when faced with new circumstances.<br /><br />Or maybe not.<br /><br />You could choose to hold your breath, stamp your feet and demand that everything remain consistent because that's the way you like it. But the world would still go on and you'd be left with nothing but your eight track tapes.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/G216UoyWvv4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com1http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2017/04/changing-your-mind.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-85192840340625857972017-03-29T13:33:00.002-07:002017-03-29T13:33:16.151-07:00The Return of Bricks & MortarI do a lot of reading. &nbsp;Biographies are my subject of choice because no matter how historically trivial or famous, <i>everyone</i>&nbsp;has a story. &nbsp;And if you pay attention, you can learn a lot -- and save yourself a ton of heartache -- by listening to them tell those stories.<br /><br />The biggest lesson common to all of those stories is that life changes a lot faster than you think.<br /><br />At the moment, I'm absorbing the stories of people who lived in the last half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. &nbsp;That's a hugely dynamic period of American history. &nbsp;John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, was born before Abraham Lincoln was elected president, but by the time he died, radio, telephones, motion pictures, airplanes, steam engines, automobiles, the War Between the States, the first world war and a host of other medical, industrial and technological inventions had come into existence, irrevocably changing every single American's way of life in a fairly short amount of time. &nbsp; In just a few decades, horses and buggies gave way to cars and airplanes. &nbsp;Gasoline, once considered a nuisance byproduct of kerosene refineries, provided the foundation for billion dollar fortunes. &nbsp;Everything got better. &nbsp;Everything went faster.<br /><br />We've just gotten through a similar period.<br /><br />Just a few decades ago, there was no internet. No social media. No point and click. No overnight delivery. &nbsp;Telephones had rotary dials and most retail stores were closed on Sundays -- often on Saturdays, as well. <br /><br />That all changed by 1998, however, when the internet got real, drastically changing the way humans interacted with businesses and each other. &nbsp;Everyone and everything functioned on a 24/7 &nbsp;basis. &nbsp;Corporate productivity and profit took huge leaps. &nbsp;Stuff got cheaper. Stuff went faster.<br /><br />Not everyone did so well, though. &nbsp;Many commercial establishments blamed the "low-overhead" internet for their inability to sustain their "higher overhead" brick and mortar operations. &nbsp;The online marketplace, they claimed, destroyed a lot of brick and mortar brands.<br /><br />Nice excuses. None of it true -- especially now.<br /><br />Brick and mortar is not only sustainable, but as of this writing, it's highly likely to flourish once again. &nbsp;The reason is simple, but not one you'll find on any corporate balance sheet or in some self-appointed guru's latest best seller.<br /><br />As of 2017, it's been nearly 20 years since the internet changed our ways of life. &nbsp;Two decades is a short time to those who remember gas selling for 28 cents a gallon. &nbsp;But it's <i>a lifetime</i> to a young, twenty-something adult who's never known anything other than pointing and clicking at a sterile, blue-tinged screen as the way to get through life. &nbsp;Ask any young person about their frustrations, pressures and disappointments with the online world -- social media in particular -- and see how they respond. &nbsp;I have. &nbsp;They all report back the same answers:<br /><br />Ineffective. Empty. &nbsp;Pointless.<br /><br />Okay, so maybe none of this is new you. &nbsp;But here's something that might be: &nbsp;The internet has created billions of very lonely people yearning for the human experience, which is precisely why bricks and mortar will come roaring back -- sooner than you think.<br /><br />At this writing, we're going on three generations of <i>social atomization,</i>&nbsp;with the internet enabling billions of recluses to <i>not socialize</i>, as long as they use&nbsp;Facebook, Twitter and whatever other app is going IPO this week. &nbsp;billions of posers are spending more time <i>presenting</i>&nbsp;their lives than actually <i>living </i>them, dying daily in their digital cocoons.<br /><br />What these kids need is a <i>place to go in real time to experience other living, warm, breathing humans.</i>&nbsp; They don't care what. &nbsp;They don't care where. &nbsp;It just has to be someplace real, where they can connect with other people. &nbsp;And that's where bricks and mortar come in. &nbsp;Mark my words, the re-emergence of totally analog retail environments is not too far off. &nbsp;I'm not prognosticating a return of Sears or Woolworth or the local mall. &nbsp; I'm talking about places and spaces with non-alcoholic activities incorporated into destinations whose primary purpose to shareholders may be revenues, but whose not-so-subtle agenda is to provide a gathering space with just enough purpose to drive shy, socially-ignorant millennials out into the real-time sunshine of social situations.<br /><br />That's where the big money is going to be. &nbsp;In and around bricks and mortar. &nbsp;Out there, away from the screens and under the blue summer sky, where she can drop her car keys by accident -- so that he can be there to pick them up.<br /><br /><br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/rJeF4zfAJP4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-return-of-bricks-mortar.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-50562932642767776652017-03-07T15:06:00.001-08:002017-03-07T15:06:16.274-08:00Underestimating Trump's Health Plan<div class="p1">You'd think that by now, Americans would have learned from their mistakes.&nbsp; In this very blog, back in <a href="http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2015/07/political-brands-2016-donald-trump.html" target="_blank">July of 2015</a>, I went on record with my conviction that Donald Trump could likely become the 45th president of the United States.&nbsp; At the time, anyone and everyone dismissed my opinion, only to watch him inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States more than 18 months later.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">At the time, the media and those who fancy themselves as quite knowledgeable, parroted each others' polls and opinions, promoting their confirmation biases based on outmoded, narrow thinking.&nbsp; In the end, there was not a Bush or Clinton in sight.&nbsp; As Britain's Nigel Farage is so fond of saying after Great Britain's BREXIT stunned the world in 2016, "You're not laughing now, are you?"</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">With all the shock and awe we've seen the world over since 2016, you'd think that people would finally understand that the political world no longer functions in the manner to which they've become accustomed.&nbsp; There really is a new world order, but it's not the one the so-called "global elitists" had in mind.&nbsp; The new reality was born with BREXIT, caught fire in the United States, and at the time of this writing, is about to strike heavy blows in France, Norway and Germany.&nbsp; Hungary has already left the station and Poland isn't far behind.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Which brings us to the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, a favorite target of geniuses on both sides of the aisle, none of whom has seemed to learn their lessons from recent world history.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">I wish that knee jerk reactionaries would take the time to understand what's <i>really</i> going on, as opposed to what they <i>think</i> is happening.&nbsp; In the first place, this isn't a "Trump" plan; it's a <i>Congressional proposal submitted for approval.</i>&nbsp; Like every other Congressional proposal, it's subject to modification and edits long before it reaches the President's desk. &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Second, it would help if the reactionaries had real jobs in the real world, which would help them understand that major changes in practices are&nbsp;<i>always </i>implemented in phases, with the simplest, most expeditious alterations are attempted first, followed by the gradual phasing in of more complicated, time-consuming issues. &nbsp; In the business world, this is how things get done: You submit a plan, phase it in, and ensure a smooth transition.&nbsp;&nbsp;In the academic world, <i>nothing other than opining</i>&nbsp;<i>ever gets done</i>, so I'm not surprised this is where their thought process stops.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Third, the crucial, more complicated phases of health care overhaul include the removal of state barriers that prevent real competition amongst service providers.&nbsp; While it's been proven that removing barriers to competition lowers costs for consumers (which is why your insurance bill is lowered when you bundle car and home coverage with the same company), getting states to go along with that plan is not something that happens quickly.&nbsp; States make a lot of money by ensuring their borders keep competitors out, so they're not likely to give up that province any time soon.&nbsp; In the meantime, Trump's plan <i>begins </i>the process with some, <i>but not all</i>, parts in play. &nbsp;In essence, Phase One is just that: &nbsp;the <i>first</i>&nbsp;part of a multi-phase plan.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">What happens next?&nbsp; What, for example, if the states simply refuse to cooperate?</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">My guess is that the states will first be offered some sort of compensation for surrendering their borders against competition.&nbsp; If they don't fall into line, I imagine the next step -- as is the case in this new world order -- would be the Federal government creating a new corporate classification of service providers which would be <i>Federally</i> chartered, granted the privilege of practicing throughout the United Staes and its territories. &nbsp;As such, these providers' services would be available to any United States citizen or resident, regardless of physical location.&nbsp; Located online and possibly headquartered in Washington, D.C., these Federally chartered service providers would be empowered to simply bypass the states via the internet, delivering more competition and lower costs that the administration promised.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">In all likelihood, service providers would jump at the chance to lower their costs:&nbsp; Ridding themselves of the compliance issues commanded by more than 50 states and territories, their costs of operation and administration would dramatically decrease, while online operations would integrate nicely into an environment of centralized electronic medical records.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">All of this could -- or could not -- happen.&nbsp; It all depends on whether you can see beyond what is set in front of you. &nbsp;If you prefer to see the long-range realities, it makes a lot of sense, &nbsp;If you prefer &nbsp;the short-term political rhetoric, it might not.&nbsp; Given the new world order, you have to ask yourself, "Does it sound unreasonable?"&nbsp; Perhaps.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><br /><div class="p1">But in July of 2015, so did the phrase, "President Trump."</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/GR9Fu-zpHoc" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com1http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2017/03/underestimating-trumps-health-plan.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-29070724903693402622017-01-08T16:02:00.001-08:002017-01-08T16:02:42.892-08:00Open Carry Saves the WorldAs of this writing, the biggest media story of the week concerns a young man who pulled out a gun and started shooting up a baggage claim area in a Florida airport. &nbsp;I don't want to get prematurely judgmental, here. &nbsp;I'll let you guess his ethno-religious affiliation. &nbsp;I watched the story on a few different media outlets, and most of them carried the same version of the story.<br /><br />The guy walked in, pulled out a gun and started shooting innocent bystanders. &nbsp;The video surveillance camera seems to agree:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m4rlAXODR6U/WHLNcKPepkI/AAAAAAAAAE4/OLOmAaBvXjkB55bYTkaiPOIi5uDncyWkgCLcB/s1600/FloridaShooter.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m4rlAXODR6U/WHLNcKPepkI/AAAAAAAAAE4/OLOmAaBvXjkB55bYTkaiPOIi5uDncyWkgCLcB/s320/FloridaShooter.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />It's a horrible situation, made even worse by all the pundits theorizing how to prevent these kinds of attacks, ranging from increased airport security to banning guns all together. &nbsp;I'm just a branding guy, but I've got another suggestion. &nbsp;Here me out on this, because it might just be as effective as it is counter intuitive.<br /><br />The country needs to nationalize open carry laws.<br /><br />I know, it sounds heretic, but the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. &nbsp;In the first place, increasing security doesn't do much good. &nbsp;Forget the costs involved. &nbsp;The hard truth is that security officers are set in place more for public consumption than anything else, the logic being that if good citizens <i>see</i> more security, they'll <i>think</i> they're safer. &nbsp;Maybe. &nbsp;But bad guys don't see security personnel as anything more than just a few more obstacles between them and their objective -- and that doesn't even take into consideration the ones on suicide missions. <br /><br />Second, for a security officer to respond to a situation, he has to <i>follow procedure,</i> or risk criminal prosecution for wounding or killing a criminal. Ordinary citizens don't have to follow any procedure. &nbsp;They merely have to fear for their lives at the moment of threat. Which means that in the event of a terrorist act, victims have to wait a whole lot longer for counter measures from a security officer than they would if the good citizen sitting nearby happens to be carrying a semi-automatic pistol.<br /><br />With open carry, a criminal can be dropped long before a security officer can even be contacted or respond, because there are more people capable of reacting much more quickly. &nbsp;In the heartbeats that follow an initial gun shot, those milliseconds count.<br /><br />Finally, the most counter intuitive observation of all is that if open carry really did become the law of the land, it could quite possibly bring this atomized nation back together. &nbsp;It might just reassure strangers on the bus that if anything should go sideways, we've got each other's backs. &nbsp;It might also cultivate a lost sense of trust and accountability in a society that's grown accustomed to paying others for doing the jobs and sustaining the ethics we seem to have shirked.<br /><br />Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of anti-gun folks out there who dismiss this line of thinking entirely. &nbsp;But as I pointed out back in 2010's &nbsp;<i><a href="http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2010/01/tipping-point-of-terror.html" target="_blank">The Tipping Point of Terror</a></i>, the tiny <i>percentage</i> of nut cases out there now translates into <i>real numbers</i>: &nbsp;If only one tenth of one percent of the American population were radicalized enough to become unstable and violent, that would mean roughly 350,000 of them would be roaming freely within our borders.<br /><br />The good news is that a few hundred million more would be watching out for you...and maybe you for them.<br /><br />&nbsp;<div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/oCJgLmgB6Fg" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2017/01/open-carry-saves-world.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-64101848033270582112016-12-01T16:44:00.001-08:002016-12-01T16:44:42.068-08:00Anyone Can Play<div class="p1">With it all over but the inauguration, Donald Trump is now the 45th President of the United States.&nbsp; I know, not everyone likes to hear that, but that's the way it's going into the books.&nbsp; At the time of this writing, there are still a lot of holdouts fomenting recounts and Electoral College mutinies.&nbsp; I expect all that will subside by the Rose Bowl's half-time show.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The year of 2016 was exciting, for sure. But I'm a branding guy.&nbsp; To me, this stuff is already history.&nbsp; I'm looking out at the horizon, straining to see what lies ahead.&nbsp; And from where I'm sitting, it's already beginning to look fairly amusing.&nbsp; Indulge me on this.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">I don't care if you're conservative or liberal: Any way you look at it, the Democrats got flattened in 2016, losing the House of Representatives, the Senate and more than likely, any voice in filling vacancies on the Supreme Court.&nbsp; The big enchilada, of course, was their "shocking" loss of the presidency, but from the 100,000 foot view, the <i>real</i> sea change was the long-awaited delivery of the internet's promise.&nbsp; Outspent and outnumbered, Republicans -- Trump in particular -- leveraged social media even better than Obama did in 2008.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">That was only the second half of the change, however.&nbsp; The first half occurred earlier in the year, as the United Kingdom roundly rejected the European Union, spectacularly defeating globalism while reclaiming its cultural and economic sovereignty.&nbsp; "Brexit" was, as they say, <i>huge</i>, a&nbsp; tremendous -- and possibly <i>the most important</i> -- boost not only to the Trump effort, but to the realization that the internet really can move millions of individuals to action.&nbsp; By utilizing the intricate channels of social media, the public actually felt as though it was really participating actively.&nbsp; All of a sudden, people weren't simply reading about the news; they were discussing it, adding to it and re-igniting&nbsp; political passions on which they'd long past given up for dead.&nbsp; For the first time, people really felt their voices were being heard -- whether they actually were or not.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">In short, for the first time in decades, the concept of <i>possibility</i> became more real than ever before.&nbsp; With the United Kingdom, that meant the European <i>wasn't</i> indomitable.&nbsp; In America, it meant any boy really <i>can</i> grow up to be President.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">This is where it gets really fun.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">From where I sit, <i>the rebirth of possibility</i> is what the next four years will be all about.&nbsp; With the Democrats having no place to go but up, and Donald Trump's victory reaffirming the concept of wide open possibility, there's a real chance that the next Democratic candidates for president will be Donald Trump knock-offs. &nbsp; Prepare yourself for a host of beauty contestants, each one a CEO or such "stepping down to pursue personal interests," as they parade past the judges in search of political support.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Think it can't happen?&nbsp; It's already started.&nbsp; At the moment, Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, has conveniently stepped down as CEO on December 1, 2016, and is not exactly vehemently denying his political interests. Schultz leans left and has never vigorously opposed the idea of seeking public office. In fact, he's gotten burned more often than French Roast for his attempts to drag coffee into politics. As for ego, there's plenty of it in the tank, and like many successful people, I'm sure he believes that if he can make a few billion dollars selling coffee, he can do <i>anything.</i>&nbsp; Maybe he can.&nbsp; At this point, the only thing of which we can be certain is that we're going to be seeing more of him -- and he won't be hawking java.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">What can we take away from this?&nbsp; Maybe nothing. But more likely, if the world is anything as I imagine, we'll spend the next year or two watching more rich commoner Democrats thinking that if Trump can do it, so can they.&nbsp; Watch for more CEOs, along with famous non-politicos dipping their toes into the political waters.&nbsp; Watch it happen even faster if the French decide to exit the European Union.&nbsp; It's going to be like when the first automobiles were invented and nobody knew if steamers, gas engines or wood-powered vehicles were going to dominate the market.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">These are historic times. Not since the turn of the twentieth century, when the bulk of political power transferred from monarchies to republics, have we witnessed so much change happening to so many people in so little time.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Get ready, America.&nbsp; Grab your popcorn.&nbsp; The beauty contest is about to begin.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><br /><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/oc3qHr6BFlA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2016/12/anyone-can-play.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-59004515616134122782016-11-10T17:37:00.002-08:002016-11-10T17:37:41.212-08:00No Experience Necessary<div class="p1">So here's some good news: the presidential election of 2016 is over.&nbsp; Donald Trump won.&nbsp; Hillary Clinton lost.&nbsp; Which means there's nothing in this piece even remotely calculated to persuade you as to how to cast your vote. Nothing.&nbsp; What you will find, however, are a few non-partisan observations that, like Trump's victory, nobody sees coming. &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">And the best part is that all of them are good, no matter who you voted for.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The first observation is something I can relate to because I've been an independent consultant for a long time.&nbsp; Whenever I interview prospective clients, they invariably ask me the same questions, including the infamous, "Do you have experience in our field?"&nbsp; It sounds like a reasonable question, but it's not, in fact, an appropriate one, because while a certain amount of familiarity is definitely an asset before plunging into a situation, it's the very <i>lack</i> of experience that allows an outsider to recognize flaws and opportunities to which lifers have become either blind or immune.&nbsp; Thomas Edison famously acknowledged this when derided about his eighth grade education.&nbsp; The lack of a higher education, he maintained, freed him from the constraints of dogmatic thinking.&nbsp; He was able to see alternative solution and create thousands of inventions by <i>not</i> thinking in traditional modes.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">It's pretty much the same thing in my own career.&nbsp; I don't need to know the intricate details of threaded fasteners or how to write a million lines of code.&nbsp; I need to know just enough to spot a flaw and improve output.&nbsp; And since I'm not a lifer, I have no allegiance in corporate legacy or fear of political reprisal. Many are the times I've challenged "We've always done it this way" with "And that's why you're losing money."&nbsp; That's when the client accepts my recommendation and we turn the business profitable.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The second observation is that young people everywhere should be thrilled with the notion that the world still offers them possibilities, no matter how little experience they have.&nbsp; Who among us <i>hasn't </i>trudged out of a job interview having been rejected solely because "you don't have the experience?"&nbsp; Remember saying to yourself, "I can do this job, if they just gave me a chance?"&nbsp; You never doubted you could prove your naysayers wrong.&nbsp; And remember that time when someone, somewhere looked you in the eye, smiled and said, "I know you've never done this before, but there's something about you that tells me you'd be a natural at this"? &nbsp; If anything, this election shows that experience isn't everything, but hard work, endless energy and the will to succeed can drive you to your goal and win it.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">A third observation is reserved for some of our older friends.&nbsp; Forget what you think about Trump for a minute and focus on the fact that the man has never held public office (neither did the Founding Fathers, Ulysses Grant or Dwight Eisenhower, for that matter) and now holds the highest public office in the land.&nbsp; That's pretty good.&nbsp; But I suspect that in the wee hours of the morning, many people imagine what they would do if they were president, only to comfort themselves that "I don't have the political connections to run for office."</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Well, I guess <i>that</i> myth just blew apart.&nbsp; Trump not only didn't get any active Republican support, he actually got active Republican <i>opposition</i>.&nbsp; He had no political connections, but lots of political enemies, fueled mostly by -- dare I say it -- jealousy. &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Yet I find something positive even in that jealousy.&nbsp; The fact that there is no longer any excuse -- other than your own self-doubt -- for not pursuing your goal, and now a guy you're not so crazy about just proved it.&nbsp; You may not like it, but that very jealousy confirms both <i>opportunity</i> and <i>possibility</i> are still very much alive in the United States and that every kid really can grow up to be President.&nbsp; That's important to you and me, but it's <i>critical</i> to our kids and everyone who has left the work force due to the last eight years of rejections.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">You don't believe that, do you?&nbsp; Well, you don't have to.&nbsp; Not yet.&nbsp; But come the twentieth of January, you may just have to.</div><br /><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/6CPg-iGAmeE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com3http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2016/11/no-experience-necessary.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-49754645993710582402016-09-28T15:27:00.000-07:002016-09-28T15:27:32.513-07:00Let's Not Go To Mars<div class="p1">So it's a slow day and I'm talking with one of my sons, who brings up Elon Musk's latest presentation on how we humans are going to colonize Mars.&nbsp; It's a fascinating subject, I admit, but at one point in the conversation, my son asked me if I'd ever want to go to Mars.&nbsp; My answer was simple and direct:</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1"><i>Why the f*ck would I ever want to go to Mars?</i></div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">I admit, it's difficult enough to get me out of the house for a quick dinner, so it should come as no surprise that journeying to a distant planet is not exactly my idea of a good time.&nbsp; More to the point, I cannot for any good reason, fathom why anyone needs to venture to Mars.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Spare me the misty-eyed romanticism of a <i>Star Trek</i> soliloquy.&nbsp; I get the whole image of boldly going where no man has gone before and all that stuff.&nbsp; I understand what's being sold to the public, because every other movie trailer is chock full of CGI effects that make space travel seem fun, adventurous and somewhat easy.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">But there's a huge disparity between what's being sold to you and what's really going to happen if and when we ever try to slip the surly bonds of Earth for the red planet.&nbsp; Let me explain:</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Historically, human exploration has never been anything more than man's fulfillment of self-interest.&nbsp; Fish crawled out of the slimy ooze looking for better food and hairy apes migrated to cooler climes for better weather. I get that. But if you know your history, after that, virtually all human migration surpasses mere self-interest, and is propelled by <i>commercial</i> <i>enterprise</i>.&nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Remember discovering the New World? Do you still buy into legends of the pilgrims motivated by religious freedom?&nbsp; Or have you grown up to accept that there were truckloads of money to be made exploiting a whole continent overflowing with raw materials?&nbsp; The expeditions into North America, Asia, Central and South America were launched by governments and public and private companies, like the Dutch East India Company. I&nbsp; promise you, none of those entities recruited, paid and sacrificed their crews for the romantic notion of human expansion.&nbsp; These guys all wanted their cut of the loot, no matter where they had to go or who they had to kill when they got there.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Going to Mars is no different, except there's nobody there to kill.&nbsp; Believe me, you and I and your grandchildren aren't going to be making reservations at the Asteroid Hilton any time soon. The first humans on the moon won't even be human, they'll be corporations like Google, SpaceX and Amazon, each carving out its territory as part of its deal with the government as private contractors, probably for mineral rights, because in case you haven't noticed, <i>nothing grows on Mars.</i></div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Think about this for a second.&nbsp; As far as we know, Mars has only two things to welcome your ship when it lands:&nbsp; Rocks and a poisonous atmosphere.&nbsp; That's it.&nbsp; Even if you brought the wife and kids, there'd be no place to go and nothing to do other than die of asphyxiation, which you could do just as easily here on Earth without having to pay for the space travel. &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Of course, there are those who believe that some day, Mars will be made habitable in the way they did it in one of those <i>Star Trek</i> movies, but I wouldn't bet the pension fund on it.&nbsp; If you're going to place bets according to movies, you're probably a lot better off going with the first version of <i>Total Recall</i>, where everything that lives survives under an airtight dome of artificially oxygenated air.&nbsp; And even then you wouldn't enjoy it because you'd constantly be worrying about some terrorist sabotaging a leak in the system.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Sound like fun to you? Not me.&nbsp; My heart goes out to those knuckleheads who fall for that whole idea of colonization, because the first five generation of Mars colonists aren't even going to be tourists.&nbsp; They're going to be construction workers and contractors, just like the ones who don't show up on time to remodel your bathroom.&nbsp; They'll have two jobs:&nbsp; Build the machines owned by the corporate sponsors and fix the the machines owned by the corporate sponsors when they break.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Don't get me wrong, I thought landing a moon was a magnificent achievement, possibly the only moment in history when the entire planet really was brought together.&nbsp; But people forget that before, during and after the moon landing, the Vietnam War continued to rage and thousands of humans went right back to their everyday jobs, carpools and PTA meetings.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Sure, the government will tout how NASA's moon program is responsible for microwave ovens, digital clocks, pocket calculators and Tang® the astronauts' orange drink.&nbsp; And I suppose there's value in that.&nbsp; I just don't see how peering through a telescope and finding nothing but rocks is going to gain any of us anything.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">Unless, of course, we see someone peering back.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/VqofpW2YpnA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2016/09/lets-not-go-to-mars.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-1069036072998156512016-09-08T16:43:00.000-07:002016-09-08T16:43:44.995-07:00You're Not That Important<div class="p1">I'm pretty sure it was Karl Marx who opined that "religion is the opiate of the masses."&nbsp; Since those days, the consuming public has a lot more choice when it comes to opiates.&nbsp; There's television.&nbsp; Music. The internet. But more than anything, I'd crown personal techno-vanity as the all-time champion.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">By personal techno-vanity, I mean all those useless gadgets, data and devices that allow you to monitor activities that carry no real importance to anyone, anywhere, at any time.&nbsp; There are pricey apps that monitor every step you take and there are expensive wrist devices that track them.&nbsp; For a modest monthly fee, the app will send and store your data someplace on the cloud so that you can retrieve and analyze it at any time of the day or night.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The question, however, is<i> why would you want to?</i></div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">I've got no quarrel with phones and devices that make you more communicative and productive with other people.&nbsp; I'm a big fan of those.&nbsp; The stuff that gets me scratching my head is the paraphernalia that does little other than promote an unhealthy level of self-absorption.&nbsp; Do you really need an app to remind you not to lock your kids in a hot car? How fast your heart beats? Your core body temperature?&nbsp; What are you really going to get out of monitoring your body mass index other than -- possibly -- bragging rights with the righteous dudes at the sports bar?</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">I know people who run.&nbsp; I know people who swim.&nbsp; I know people who lift, bro.&nbsp; What I don't know is why they make such a big deal out of it, or why they require little wrist devices to enslave them.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Actually, I<i> do</i> know why. It's because companies like Apple and Nike have discovered that<i> vanity</i> is the&nbsp; opiate of the masses.&nbsp; They know that you not only love yourself, you practically worship yourself.&nbsp; And if they bolster that illusion of self-importance by creating pointless hardware and software, you're going to spend all kinds of money in an effort of believing that you really are that important.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Newsflash:&nbsp; You're not that important.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Oh, I know that in this age of social justice warriors and snowflakes and participation trophies you might<i> think</i> you're something special, but you're not and neither is all that extraneous data you're hoarding.&nbsp; Have to watch your blood pressure?&nbsp; Your glucose levels? Okay, I get that.&nbsp; But wirelessly linking your smart phone to your shoes?&nbsp; Really?</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">And if that's not enough, what's the deal with running triathlons and Iron Man competitions?&nbsp; What's everyone trying to prove to everyone else?&nbsp; How much do you really need to bulk up? A host of millennial brands perpetuate these worthless pursuits, featuring fitness models running through the countryside while everyone else is at the office making a living and paying bills.&nbsp; The truth is that these fictitious fitness freaks never had to buy fitness equipment or use supplements or software to get in shape -- they're all in their twenties.&nbsp;<i> They were born that way</i>.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">But don't tell that to brands like&nbsp; Bowflex, who prefer you believe that being cut is what every fifty year old really wants to be, when I'd venture to say that what the average fifty year old really wants is to be left the hell alone so he can order a piece of cheesecake without having to endure a lecture about cholesterol and triglycerides.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">There was a time when people worked and played.&nbsp; And that's all they did.&nbsp; Nobody felt the need to analyze data from the family picnic or check a website for the precise moment high tide rushed up on the beach.&nbsp; There was a time when you could have a good time just to have a good time.&nbsp; You could run because you loved the way fresh grass felt on the soles of your bare feet.&nbsp; There was no time target. No personal best. It just felt good.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">So relax. Unplug.&nbsp; You're not that important, despite what you think the data indicates.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/SIwkdrJbjvQ" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com1http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2016/09/youre-not-that-important.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-72278647459072517402016-08-31T11:09:00.003-07:002016-08-31T11:13:18.033-07:00Financial Illiterates<div class="p1">I get a fair number of people writing to me, both online and off, about all kinds of issues.&nbsp; Most of the time, they're brand-related topics, although like this blog, some of those topics stretch the very bounds of "tangential."&nbsp; I am surprised, however, at one deficit common to so many of them:</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Financial illiteracy.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Mind you, the people with whom I engage are <i>not</i> uneducated in the general sense.&nbsp; They run the gamut, from high schoolers to post-graduates.&nbsp; Some are intuitively brilliant; others incredibly motivated and disciplined.&nbsp; So it's not that they're stupid or naive.&nbsp; They're simply not educated about how money, finance, business and the economy works. They lack critical thinking skills.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">It's not completely their fault.&nbsp; Try finding a middle school, high school, college or even a graduate school that teaches people how to think critically or actually do business.&nbsp; I'm not talking about that useless crap that <i>passes</i> as a "business education," like <i>Introduction to Accounting 101.</i>"&nbsp; I'm talking about the drive, the initiative, the critical thinking and decision-making that propels people into business success.&nbsp; And don't get fooled by "entrepreneurship" classes, either. They may show you the lay of the land, but not how to successfully navigate it.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">To see what I mean, try Frankel's Financial Literary Test yourself or on any of your peers.&nbsp; It's really simple. One question:</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1"><i>What would you do with $1,000?</i></div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The top answers are usually, "I'd buy something nice for my Mom," followed by, "I'd buy something nice for my Dad."&nbsp; After that, you may hear, "I'd buy something really nice for myself," and occasionally, "I'd pay down my credit card."</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">All wrong.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The correct answer is, "<i>I'd see how fast I could turn it into two thousand.</i>"&nbsp; If you hear anything else, you've lost.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">It's a mind set thing.&nbsp; And this is why just about every MBA I meet is so thoroughly disappointing.&nbsp; Sure, they know how to read a balance sheet and a financial statement, but rarely know how to do the one thing that drives business success:&nbsp; <i>spot and exploit an opportunity.</i></div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">One reason why so many people have so little money is because, let's face it, it's been a tough economy since 2008.&nbsp; But lots of people have managed to succeed even during these tough times, not because they were connected or privileged , but because they not only knew how to recognize opportunities, they actually hunted them.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Prior to America's Great Softening in the 1970s, the top rated characteristic of Americans was self-reliance.&nbsp; The vast majority of citizens took pride in the notion that if they didn't kill, they didn't eat. Everyone, sporting the bluest blue or whitest white collar took pride is his ability to seek out opportunity, and once found, exploit it to his advantage.&nbsp; It's how he provided for himself and his family.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">That's only half the equation, however.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The second part of financial literacy comes about after success, when questions arrive as to what can be done with the proceeds of success.&nbsp; Once again, Frankel's Financial Literary Test comes into play.&nbsp; I'm impressed by the number of people who have no idea what to do with their money after they've made it. Prominent citizens -- not just students fresh out of college -- have no idea how entrepreneurial investment, the stock market, bonds, fiscal or monetary policies affect them. The same laziness that likely landed them in their corporate law firms prompts them to turn over their earnings to financial managers whose only real talents are in herding "easy money" clients into company-created mutual funds.&nbsp; The very same funds, by the way, that take the hardest hits when the economy goes south.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Especially at the time of this writing, there are no simple answers for "reliable income" or "financial security."&nbsp; And despite the free seminars being offered on TV and radio,&nbsp; there are no courses that provide "survival skills" for the financially illiterate.&nbsp; You can teach people how to flip houses, but you can't teach them motivation. You can only convey the importance of recognizing opportunity.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p2">It's the foundation on which successful lives -- and successful countries -- are built.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/luMSTz6AV-4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com4http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2016/08/financial-illiterates.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-13778928645143511122016-08-20T10:12:00.000-07:002016-08-20T10:12:23.224-07:00The Truth About Online Ads<div class="p1">If you subscribe to my blog, you know I spend a fair amount of time touching on issues that are tangential to branding. That's because branding - despite what every other "authority" might tell you -- is really just about harnessing human behavior in order to increase your bottom line.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Let's face it: Why even bother with branding if it <i>doesn't</i> enhance your profitable revenue?</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">This time out, I'm hitting closer to home, answering the often-asked-but-never-answered tactical question, "Does online advertising really work?"&nbsp; The short answer is yes. And no. The correct answer is, "It depends."&nbsp; And here's the real-life data I have to back it up for you.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">If you're going to commit to advertising your product or service, the first decision you have to make is whether your offering is a <i>solution</i> or a <i>lifestyle</i> issue.&nbsp; I'd define a <i>solution</i> as a definitive remedy to an immediate problem, whereas a <i>lifestyle</i> issue is less an immediate solution than it is an <i>elective purchase.</i>&nbsp; Finding a plumber to fix your leaking pipes is an immediate <i>solution; </i>purchasing a box of chocolates is more of an elective <i>lifestyle </i>decision.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">This is a major variation on the traditional methods used by advertising agencies to plan and buy media for clients, because in the past, most ad buying was determined by <i>demographics</i>, targeting audiences by <i>quantifiable </i>data such as gender, age, education and geography.&nbsp; If you can put a number on it, <i>demographics</i> was the way to go.&nbsp; As media flourished, however, <i>psychographics </i>have become even more important, focusing on wants and needs.&nbsp; After all, if you're selling maple syrup, you can be either gender, any age, with any education in any part of the world.&nbsp; The only qualification is your love of maple syrup.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Before I get too far into it, let me add one more caveat:&nbsp; Ad agencies are very fond of "generating awareness" as an worthwhile goal.&nbsp; And while it's true that people have to know about your product before they can buy it, <i>awareness alone is worth nothing</i>.&nbsp; In fact, the worst case is when everyone knows about your brand but nobody buys it.&nbsp; Awareness that produces no revenue is merely a trajectory to complete failure.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">In my own little corner of the world, I've tested both approaches with products/services of my own.&nbsp; I figure my own pontification is just that more credible if I've played with my own money, so here's the deal: &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">My findings (and I'll bear this out with numbers for you) is that <i>solutions</i> do well with Google AdWords while <i>lifestyle </i>purchases do best with Facebook and, to a far lesser extent, Twitter.&nbsp; Here are the two projects I've tested.&nbsp; If you know me, you already know them.&nbsp; But if you're new here, they are as follows:</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1"><a href="http://onedaydecisions.com/">OneDayDecisions.com</a> is an online settlement service that allows anyone in America to avoid small claims court by settling and paying out any monetary dispute by simply going online.&nbsp; It's a disrupter. It does for small claims disputes what PayPal did for payments.&nbsp; It's cheaper, faster and more efficient than any small claims, arbitration or mediation.&nbsp; <a href="http://onedaydecisions.com/">OneDayDecisions.com</a> is clearly a <i>solution</i>.&nbsp; The only people who would need it are people who need to resolve an immediate situation that's happening right now. &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">When people need a solution to a problem, they <i>don't</i> hang around scrolling through Facebook or Twitter.&nbsp; They do what you and I do when we have a problem:&nbsp; They Google the problem in search of a solution.&nbsp; That's exactly how the numbers play out for OneDayDecisions.com:&nbsp; Neither Facebook nor Twitter did anything to move the needle on site activity or even visits, because nobody scrolls through their feeds looking for solutions to problems they're not immediately facing. &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Google AdWords, on the other hand, is like Facebook/Twitter's evil twin.&nbsp; If you subscribe to my definition of branding being "perceived by prospects as the only solution to their problem," you need only consider what situation prospects experience to search Google for your offered solution.&nbsp; In this case, our Google AdWords ad appears when our prospects find themselves threatened by some sort of court or collection action.&nbsp; In an industry where a 1% clickthrough rate is considered nominal, OneDayDecisions.com ads generate well over three times that rate -- at the ridiculously low cost of less than 42¢ per visit -- to send qualified prospects our way.&nbsp; That's way better than Facebook, Twitter or even national TV.&nbsp; Google AdWords is the "go to" medium.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">But for different products/services, Facebook succeeds where Google flops:</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The other project is my latest book, <a href="http://www.theartistwholovedwomen.com/" target="_blank">The Artist Who Loved Women:&nbsp; The Incredible Life &amp; Work of Patrick Nagel, the Most Successful &amp; Anonymous Artist of the 1980s</a>.&nbsp; Believe me, it's a great book, but <i>nobody</i> is scanning Google searching for it.&nbsp; Why would they? It's not an immediate problem for them.&nbsp; The book is more of a <i>lifestyle </i>decision, which lands directly in Facebook's wheelhouse.&nbsp; If you haven't noticed, all the political haters, zombie television fans and cat lovers have proven that birds of a feather really do flock together, if only to follow pages and people who endorse and promote their common agenda. Love Trump? Hate Hillary? Feel the Bern? Your age, gender and geography doesn't matter; <i>your common interest does</i>. &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">For that reason, Facebook allows you to reach people based on those common interests which are more casually experienced.&nbsp; In the case of my book, that means reaching out to art lovers, design people, hipsters and baby boomers (read: fans of the eighties) through Facebook groups devoted to them.&nbsp; As part of its program, Facebook creates a landing page that others can join, which can also direct them to your commercial site.&nbsp; I participate by commenting from the book's Facebook page, so that anyone curious can simply click to the book's Facebook page and then on to either Amazon or the book's website to actually buy the book. And they do.&nbsp; While Google AdWords fails to drive any traffic, Facebook users click through at over 3% -- at only 9¢ per visitor -- and sales are increasing.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">If you're still with me, you should know two more things:</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">First, Twitter is pretty useless, even if you have a decent following. I tested two accounts, one with 2500+ followers and one with 26 followers.&nbsp; Believe it or not, neither produced any discernible sales, but interestingly, the account with 26 followers produced more visitors, simply due to one basic strategy: using hashtags to get <i>other</i> accounts to retweet my posts.&nbsp; Turns out that a generic hashtag will get you retweeted by robots designed specifically to send out updates and build their own followings.&nbsp; So one tweet with the URL <a href="http://theartistwholovedwomen.com/">TheArtistWhoLovedWomen.com</a>, a graphic of the book's cover and the hashtag #book got retweeted to about 100,000 Twitter accounts.&nbsp; So who really needs a huge following?</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Second, Google does a lot of pick up work behind the scenes, meaning its robots are constantly scanning the internet, tracking and listing all your efforts.&nbsp; A simple search for the book's title shows an increasing number of Facebook and Twitter activity and links which I didn't lift a finger to create.&nbsp; The only caveat here is to make sure all your URL links are valid and accurate so that prospects land where you want them to be.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><br /><div class="p1">And here you were, thinking I ever do is snark.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/zyo2sRtLATk" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-truth-about-online-ads.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-85088243450236297952016-07-22T09:52:00.001-07:002016-07-22T09:52:48.499-07:00Why Comedy Isn't Funny<div class="p1">I was scrolling through another mindless Facebook newsfeed, when I noticed something I found really interesting.&nbsp; Among the screeds of political haters and social justice warriors was a disproportionate batch of video clips and photo memes from comedians, all of which were politically themed.&nbsp; Most of them were snarky.&nbsp; A few were certifiably fake.&nbsp; But none of them, regardless of their agenda, were particularly funny.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Instead of making me laugh, this phenomenon made me wonder.&nbsp; Why is there so much comedy?&nbsp; And why is so much of it just not funny?</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Okay, so I'm not a young, millennial hipster.&nbsp; I acknowledge that I am no longer cutting edge (not that I'm sure I ever was).&nbsp; I hail from an age when comedy was a completely different animal, dominated mainly by self-deprecating Jewish men.&nbsp; To this day, the works of Woody Allen, Carl Reiner, Alan King, Don Rickles, Henny Youngman, Phil Silvers, Jerry Stiller, Albert Brooks, Garry Marshall -- <i>schtickmeisters</i> of the Golden Age -- still elicit chuckles from me and everyone else who has the motivation to seek them out. &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">In those days, everyone in the multi-ethnic audience laughed.&nbsp; Today, nobody really does.&nbsp; I think I know why:</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">First, the whole notion of "funny" has changed.&nbsp; And I'm not rehashing the whole social justice warrior thing. I'm talking about what people now identify as humorous.&nbsp; Sigmund Freud once asserted that humor is actually veiled hostility, citing the fact that unlike every other animal on the planet, humans are the only ones who ostensibly <i>don't</i> show their teeth as an expression of anger. Freud speculated that all humor, therefore, actually <i>is</i> rooted in anger, it's just served up as laughter.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Freud may have been right, considering a majority of what I now see passing as humor is much more akin to harsh rants and endless diatribes about all that's wrong with someone else.&nbsp; Whereas George Burns might have remarked on the adorable, misguided antics of his wife, Gracie Allen, now we watch any stand-up wannabe drone on about how stupid the people are at the DMV.&nbsp; Or the post office. Or in the government. Or at the very next desk where they work.&nbsp; &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Today's comedy has also been dumbed down to the low level of education of the audience.&nbsp; Few people know anything about history, world events, art or literature.&nbsp; Were they to launch their act today, I'd bet <i>Monty Python's Flying Circus</i> would never get off the ground.&nbsp; In fact, with the world increasingly atomized by digital technology, everyone lives in his own individual world, unaware that others exist.&nbsp; As such, the comedians' frames of reference has shrunk dynamically to the point that very few common frames of reference can be addressed.&nbsp; Believe me, comedians don't focus on sex because it's edgy; they focus on sex because it's one of the increasingly few topics to which everyone in the audience can relate.&nbsp; As the country dumbs down, there's less relevant material.&nbsp; This is the momentum which powered Jerry Seinfeld's brand of <i>relativistic</i> comedy:&nbsp; Comedy went from people laughing at <i>this is my funny observation</i> to nodding in agreement to <i>have you ever noticed</i>?&nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Comedy was no longer funny.&nbsp; It became a sense of community which then morphed into factionalism.&nbsp; You either get it or you don't.&nbsp; You're either in or you're out.&nbsp; You're either one of us or you're not.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">I also notice that what passes for comedy is often nothing more than petty sniping, offering no solutions to the problems the comedians cite.&nbsp; Even the dark humor of Lenny Bruce not only exposed the folly of narrow-mindedness, but offered up solutions. Today, if you listen closely, comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert offer nothing other than sharp criticisms, but never reveal their true cleverness by going the next step of solution, which would be far funnier, especially if the solution to the problem were simple and sensible.</div><br /><div class="p1">It's too bad that comedy, like so much else, has deteriorated to the levels it has.&nbsp; But it doesn't come as a complete surprise.&nbsp; Now unzip your pants and enjoy the show.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/EA1anDdgP8E" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2016/07/why-comedy-isnt-funny.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-77641037991654041752016-07-10T08:10:00.001-07:002016-07-10T08:10:32.991-07:00Smith for President<div class="p1"><div class="p1">Sometime between the Neolithic and Paleolithic Eras, I found myself a sophomore in college, which in the day of four-year university curricula, made me a second year student.&nbsp; It was during these last years of childhood that I was fortunate to discover a variety of theories, philosophies and facts that expanded and altered my viewpoints on a number of topics.&nbsp; At the top of the list was my exposure to economic theory.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Until college, I'd never heard of John Stuart Mill or Adam Smith.&nbsp; To me, <i>Malthusian Theory</i> sounded like a first rate science fiction feature from the fifties.&nbsp; Like most kids, I simply took economics for granted: as long as the liquor store had beer and I had cash, the system worked.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">It was at the end of my junior year I chose to major in, and write a graduating thesis on, Economic History. Having discovered that everything I'd learned in life was pretty much a lie, I had no use for social, religious, political or art history.&nbsp; I dismissed all of them as completely lacking any credibility. After all, <i>who really marches across Europe to the Holy Land for religion? Isn't it really about pillage and treasure</i>?&nbsp; Of course. And that's when I embraced Adam Smith and the notion of humans moving in, and only for, their own self-interests. &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Now <i>that</i> made sense to me. But it also begged a much more important question: If so much of what I'd been taught was a lie, how much more was there to re-examine?&nbsp; Turned out there was a lot. In fact, just about everything I looked at challenged the veracity of just about everything I'd been taught in my first 20 years of life.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The toughest transition young adults have to make is discovering the disparity between truths and teachings. Sure, it's great to hear how the American War Between the States was about the abolition of slavery. The truth, however, turns out to have far less to do about slavery than it does about economics, with the industrial North wresting control of the union from the agrarian South.&nbsp; As politically incorrect as it may sound, prior to 1865, slaves were viewed as industrial capital, in the same way we view trucks, machines and hardware today.&nbsp; Southern plantations invested the modern day equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars into the purchase, maintenance and propagation of their slave labor -- and weren't too keen about simply "letting them go" with no reimbursement.&nbsp; Imagine today's government demanding Exxon and Chevron turning over their drilling, shipping, refining and research facilities with no remuneration. Probably wouldn't incite a whole lot of national favor.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">When viewed through the economic lens, just about everything looks and acts differently, including politics. And nothing takes on a completely different personality than the Presidency of the United States.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">For some reason, Americans -- including this, the least educated generation in modern history -- cling to the notion of the Presidency as they were taught in grade school.&nbsp; Beginning with George Washington's chopping of the cherry tree, legends and under-qualified school teachers drone on about the political and social attributes of our national leaders, without ever addressing their true agenda: economic welfare of the union. &nbsp; Oh, you may get a mention of the Louisiana Purchase or Seward's Folly (the purchase of Alaska), but that's just a minor withdrawal from petty cash.&nbsp; Put on your big boy pants, and pretty soon you find that <i>every</i> President from Washington on down put the people's economic interests first and foremost.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The Boston Tea Party? Economic. The Whiskey Rebellion? Economic. The Stamp Act? Economic.&nbsp; In fact, if you look hard enough, the vast majority of all legislation begins and ends with <i>economic agenda</i>.&nbsp; The only reason Americans think otherwise is because too often, that legislation is <i>cloaked in social agenda to help make the sale.</i></div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Look, I'm a branding strategist. I don't care about what it looks like.&nbsp; I care about <i>what works</i>.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Women's suffrage? The fourteenth amendment banning slavery? The eighteenth amendment banning alcohol? Today, they're taught as matters of social justice.&nbsp; But it wasn't always that way. At the time, it was all about the cash.&nbsp; It's just more convenient to paint those issues over with a social justice spin to make ourselves feel better about the harsh realities that drive us.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">As Adam Smith espoused, people move in their own self-interest.&nbsp; As President Dwight D. Eisenhower pronounced, "You cannot legislate the hearts and minds of men." This is why you don't want a President who hides behind a social agenda. You want one who understands that the United States has always been, and always will be, driven by economic self-interest of its citizens.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">It's not your traditional view of the American Presidency.&nbsp; It may contradict everything you've been taught about it.&nbsp; But that's okay. Discomfort is a good thing.&nbsp; It's how you know you're on the verge of discovering the truth.</div><br /><div class="p2"><br /></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/LCI0qpbnsbQ" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2016/07/smith-for-president.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-85666126270300645802016-06-12T09:07:00.001-07:002016-06-12T09:07:49.223-07:00Good Guys, Bad Guys<div class="p1">Over the last decades, I've made a lot of clients a lot of money.&nbsp; Some were stagnant brands.&nbsp; Others were funded startups. In both cases, the cure for their ills was a true brand strategy that actually delivered more money on the bottom line (which is what brands and brand strategies are supposed to do, if you didn't know).&nbsp; It was good for them and good for me.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Throughout the course of my cavalcade of clients, I always advised them that a true, productive brand strategy possessed four irreplaceable aspects in order to function.&nbsp; Three out of four would never work.&nbsp; It had to be all four or nothing.&nbsp; Those four were authoritativeness, defensibility, credibility and clarity.&nbsp; Simple, right?&nbsp; I could issue a discourse on all four, but on this outing, I'd like to stick to one in particular:&nbsp; clarity.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The other day, I was up early in the morning, on a Saturday where there's not much to watch other than rehashed news, pathetic infomercials and -- because I'm a big fan of retro television -- reruns of TV shows from the 1950s.&nbsp; On this Saturday, I was treated to an episode of <i>The Roy Rogers Show</i> , a quintessential weekly western and was suitably impressed.&nbsp; The entire show was in black and white. The plot was thin, the soundtrack was thinner.&nbsp; The dialogue could have been phoned in. And the outcome was predictable.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">I loved it. But <i>why</i> did I love it so much?</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">It's not so much that I'm a fan of sub-par production values, nor am I a soppy, weeping sentimentalist.&nbsp; I never watched the show when it first ran, because I wasn't even on the planet its first time out.&nbsp; After thinking about it, however, I hit upon the answer:&nbsp; Clarity.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Watching <i>The Roy Rogers Show</i> -- and just about any TV show from the 1950s and early 1960s -- one realizes that everything and everyone is clearly depicted for who and what they are.&nbsp; The good guys wear white hats; the bad guys wear black hats.&nbsp; When the bad guys steal stuff, everyone knows it's wrong and the good guys go after them.&nbsp; Nobody sits around debating <i>why</i> the bad guys stole the bank deposits, or whether stealing the bank deposits should really be classified as a crime.&nbsp; The good guys see a wrong and right it.&nbsp; In 28 minutes, the crime is committed, the case is solved and justice is done, usually ending with the bad guys going to jail.&nbsp; No psychologists in the old west. No Facebook mobs or social justice warriors confusing the issues.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Retro television is an amazing looking glass, reflecting the clarity of an American society from another day.&nbsp; Attorneys and lawyers, for example, understand that it is not their duty to "get their clients off," but to see that their clients <i>are afforded a fair trial</i>.&nbsp; Prior to 1970, the majority of Americans expected their legal representative to hold prosecutors accountable, but in no instance did a guilty defendant expect to go free.&nbsp; After 1970, it became a whole new ball game, where lawyers weren't hired to assure fairness, but simply to help the defendant avoid accountability.&nbsp; Since then, the <i>only</i> reason why defendants hire lawyers are to get the charges dismissed, hung up via mistrial or derailed through delays and technicalities.&nbsp; The present legal system, it seems, has lost all clarity, taken down by obfuscation and a distorted sense of purpose.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The more you look around, the more <i>lack of clarity</i> you can see.&nbsp; Prior to the year 1980, for example, the United States military was charged with one basic mission, which was to identify a threat, pursue the threat and eliminate the threat -- with deadly force, if necessary.&nbsp; Very simple, very clear.&nbsp; I assure you that the Second World War was won with little hesitation. It was planned, executed and terminated.&nbsp; Not so today, where despite technological wonders, many lethal strikes are delayed until permissions are sent up and down the chain of command, micro-managing decisions that in an earlier day were triggered in micro-seconds.&nbsp; Again, no clarity.&nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Nor is the lack of clarity limited to foreign battlefields.&nbsp; As a result of Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, police can no longer distinguish which crimes will portray them as heroes or criminals.&nbsp; They see wrong, but hesitate to perform their duties lest they be prosecuted, suspended, fired or jailed.&nbsp; Outside a recent political rally in San Jose, California, where protesters beat and bloodied an innocent, peaceful audience, the cops just stood by, <i>unsure of what they should do.</i></div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Of course, there will always be those who seek to escape accountability due to extenuating circumstances.&nbsp; In some case, there might be extenuating circumstances. But those are the exceptions, not the rule. I suspect a lot of people would be a lot happier if they knew what was right, what was wrong and that everyone was playing by the same rules.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">In the meantime, stay safe and keep hoping you never need to call a cop.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p2">&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><br /><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/BCv2ToSBHgE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2016/06/good-guys-bad-guys.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-39048451323590784372016-05-25T18:07:00.001-07:002016-05-25T18:07:54.696-07:00Dinner With Uncle Sam<div class="p1">It was my Uncle Sam's birthday recently, so a few of my cousins and I decided to take him out to dinner.&nbsp; Sam has always been a big, generous guy who's been like a second father to us all, so we wanted to make the occasion special.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">"Where would you like to go, Sam?" asked Bernie. "Any place you want to go! Money is no object!" Sam sat and thought about it.&nbsp; Then Hillary piped up.&nbsp; "Sam, you deserve a really special dinner.&nbsp; I know a great place you'll love, I promise. You can trust me."&nbsp; Again, Sam furrowed his brow in thought.&nbsp; A minute later, Donald made another suggestion.&nbsp; "How about Al's Steakhouse?"</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Uncle Sam's contentment turned to discomfort at Donald's suggestion.&nbsp; "Gee," he drawled, "I don't know about Al's Steakhouse.&nbsp; I'm not so sure about the food there."&nbsp; All three cousins asked what happened.&nbsp; Then Uncle Sam told us about the last few times he ate at Al's. &nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">"The first time, I ordered the seafood and it was delicious. Came with rice on the side and a nice dessert.&nbsp; But before I left the table, my stomach felt awful and I had to run to the bathroom with a horrible case of the runs.&nbsp; A week or two later, I ate there again.&nbsp; This time I had a shrimp salad and a pasta dish.&nbsp; I was just finishing a small pastry dessert when I suddenly became nauseous and threw up right on my shoes! I figured maybe it was some bad shrimp that night. But two weeks after that, I had a wonderful steak with a baked potato.&nbsp; No dessert, but a fabulous clam chowder as an appetizer.&nbsp; Sure enough, before I could finish the potato, I felt dizzy, passed out and had to be taken to the emergency room."</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">"That's sounds awful!" my cousins echoed in chorus.&nbsp; "Maybe we shouldn't go to Al's," offered Donald.&nbsp; "No, no," insisted Bernie. "We must go to Al's.&nbsp; A few bad meals doesn't mean that all of Al's food makes people sick.&nbsp; After all, Uncle Sam got sick, but not everyone who eats there get ill!"&nbsp; Hillary agreed with Bernie.&nbsp; "I know the owners of Al's Steakhouse and I am very sure that this is all a coincidence.&nbsp; I go way back with the owners.&nbsp; I doubt they'd want to poison you, Sam."</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Donald looked at them both with dismay.&nbsp; "Wait a minute," he cautioned.&nbsp; "Sam's gotten violently ill not once,, not twice, but three different times in the very same place.&nbsp; I don't think he should go back there at all, at least not until they figure out what's making him sick."</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Bernie and Hillary grew incensed.&nbsp; "You can't do that!" they objected. "You don't know which food made him sick!&nbsp; Just because he fell ill after two or three meals doesn't mean that <i>all</i> of Al's food is bad! You're an extremist! It's not fair to Al's to simply avoid the place altogether!"</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Donald squinted his retort.&nbsp; "Let's see, when Sam <i>doesn't</i> eat at Al's, he's fine.&nbsp; But when he <i>does</i> eat at Al's he gets sick.&nbsp; As far as I'm concerned, until we know specifically which food there makes him sick, we need to keep him out of there.&nbsp; Once we find out which foods make him sick, we can take him back there."</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Sam nodded in agreement.&nbsp; "I like Al's Steakhouse," he said.&nbsp; "One day, I'll go back there.&nbsp; But not until I know which meals are making me ill."</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">"Sam, I must object," lectured Bernie. "Al's is a great institution. They deserve our respect."&nbsp; "I have to agree," added Hillary.&nbsp; "You should take another chance at have dinner there in order to avoid offending them."</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">"I think I'll go with Donald this time," smiled Uncle Sam.&nbsp; "It seems safer for my health."&nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">"You made the right decision, Sam," smiled Donald. "If you stay out of Al's there's no chance that any of their food can make you sick.&nbsp; And to show there's no hard feelings, I'll pick up the tab."&nbsp;</div><br /><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/hx0noxrd2OE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2016/05/dinner-with-uncle-sam.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-54932183288006270962016-04-09T10:30:00.000-07:002016-04-09T10:30:03.633-07:00What Feminism Hath Wrought<div class="p1">"How was your date?" I asked, reaching for my coffee.&nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">"Awful," she replied. "That's over for good."&nbsp; Apparently, they'd been getting along fairly well, but the sex, she volunteered, was horrible.&nbsp; "He was just <i>performing</i>. I asked him, 'What are you doing?' and he said, 'I just want to please you.'&nbsp; It was weird. The guy had obviously watched too much porn.&nbsp; Whatever happened to making love?"</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Quite honestly, it was more than I needed to know. I actually just wanted to find out if the restaurant at which they'd dined was any good, but her revelation did manage to hijack the conversation into a much more interesting direction, mainly because I'd been hearing the same type of complaints from people her age and younger. Just about all of the single people I know, from kids in their teens to middle aged peers had voiced similar sexual disappointments to me.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">I know.&nbsp; I'm that kind of guy.&nbsp; People tell me stuff.&nbsp; But hear me out on this, because what I suspect we're witnessing is no small thing. And despite the title of this piece, it's not what you think I'm going to say.&nbsp; Yes,&nbsp;I'm going to lay this at the feet of feminism, but not for the reasons you expect.&nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">You should know that I personally harbor no bias regarding gender roles. I happen to love holding people accountable to <i>my</i> one set of impossibly rigorous standards, regardless of their ilk.&nbsp; My scrutiny knows no sexual preference.&nbsp; So in that sense, I've always somewhat supported feminism. And then one day, I watched as feminism's reach began to exceed its grasp, most notably with Gloria Steinem's pronouncement in the 1960s that&nbsp; "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."&nbsp; At the outset, it seemed to make sense, prying women off of their dependence on men. Good idea for anyone who valued freedom and independence. It really did open the eyes of both men and women to a whole new world of choices awaiting them.&nbsp; What it <i>didn't</i> do was let them know that a fish without a bicycle rides both ways and that years later, everyone from kids to middle aged matrons would be paying for it:</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Men no longer needed to depend on women, either.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The sexual liberation of both men and women gave rise to sexual freedom, but also undermined the main reason why people used to get married, so there was no longer any real reason for men to ever want to get married.&nbsp; After all, men could dine out any time, without any of the maintenance costs.&nbsp; They could have kids out of wedlock, pay child support and never suffer the inequities of community property.&nbsp; And in the worst cases of sexual need, Steinem's quip about fish and bicycles was soon displaced by men's realization that they don't pay prostitutes for sex, they pay them <i>to leave.</i></div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Add the mainstreaming of pornography to mix and it becomes clear as to how romance simply became obsolete. Most kids and people now learn about sex and romance from movies and porn, which leaves them pathetic at both.&nbsp; What was once courtship leading to love and sex is now swiping right, leading to hook up and disappointment.&nbsp; People really think life is a quick cut movie with no transitioning scenes. At this stage, most of them don't know that they're missing because they've never seen it.&nbsp; And most of them are left bewildered and unsatisfied.&nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The constant overreach of feminism into <i>emasculation</i> certainly hasn't&nbsp; helped.&nbsp; Stupid TV Dads and ever more ridiculous degeneration of male gender roles have continued their relentless attacks on primal masculinity.&nbsp; For every John Wayne of yesteryear there are now two Pierce Brosnans, Ben Afflecks and George Clooneys.&nbsp; You know, women with penises.&nbsp; Not the best role models for those attempting to reconcile their natural maleness with society's distorted views.&nbsp; Somewhere along the line, feminism crossed over from equal opportunity to denigration and opposition of gender roles.&nbsp; That doesn't sit well with most men -- and from what they tell me, it doesn't play all that well with women, either.&nbsp; After all, if someone called you up every day to tell you how wrong you were about who you are and what you do, how long would you welcome their calls?</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">You want everyone in the game to have an equal shot in the marketplace? I'm right there with you.&nbsp; You want to be politically correct and accommodate far-fetched excesses of feminism?&nbsp; Knock yourself out.&nbsp; But then don't complain about a harsher world without love and understanding of what makes men and women, well, men and women.&nbsp;</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1"><i>You must remember this</i></div><div class="p1"><i>A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh</i></div><div class="p1"><i>The fundamental things apply</i></div><div class="p1"><i>As time goes by</i></div><div class="p1"><i>And when two lovers woo</i></div><div class="p1"><i>They still say, "I love you"</i></div><div class="p1"><i>On that you can rely</i></div><div class="p1"><i>No matter what the future brings</i></div><div class="p1"><i>As time goes by</i></div><div class="p1"><i>Moonlight and love songs</i></div><div class="p1"><i>Never out of date</i></div><div class="p1"><i>Hearts full of passion</i></div><div class="p1"><i>Jealousy and hate</i></div><div class="p1"><i>Woman needs man</i></div><div class="p1"><i>And man must have his mate</i></div><br /><div class="p1"><i>That no one can deny.</i></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/yw_1R7ESbhM" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com3http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2016/04/what-feminism-hath-wrought.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870013.post-1106108974123447512016-03-20T09:32:00.001-07:002016-03-20T09:37:54.075-07:00The Defibrillator<div class="p1">No matter what generation in which you are born, there are certain lessons you learn at your mother's or father's knee, or more accurately, at the end of their pointed fingers.&nbsp; Everyone has heard the constant refrains about washing their hands before eating dinner.&nbsp; Another old saw has to do with how long after lunch one has to wait before going swimming.&nbsp; You know the drill, right?&nbsp; These are warnings we've all heard a million times, and because we've heard them, we now know not to cross the street until the light turns green.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">There does come a time in one's life, however, when we simply have to temper the warnings of childhood with the wisdom of experience.&nbsp; Just as most of the adult world has figured out that "not stopping that" hasn't -- and probably won't -- render them blind, there comes a time when some of our childhood fears have to be re-examined or even reversed.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Among those that we reverse is our fear of electricity.&nbsp; As kids, we're warned to stay away from electrical outlets because we're told that one finger on a bare wire could electrocute us.&nbsp; Electrocution burns the skin and shocks the nervous system.&nbsp; Electricity can kill you.&nbsp; But like fire, electricity has its good points, too.&nbsp; It powers everything in our lives, from can openers to large screen televisions.&nbsp; Without electricity, there is no internet, no communications.&nbsp; In fact, without electric power, our entire civilization breaks down and the system as a whole dies.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">So imagine the fear one must endure when his physical health is in jeopardy.&nbsp; The doctor confirms that your heart isn't performing properly.&nbsp; That vascular pump -- itself driven by bio-electrical power -- is the engine of your overall health, distributing oxygenated blood and nutrients throughout the rest of your body, enabling all other organs to function.&nbsp; But now, your doctor says, your heart is slowing down, and not performing its function.&nbsp; In turn, those vital organs aren't functioning well.&nbsp; They're breaking down and malnourished.&nbsp; This, your doctor tells you, means that your whole system is breaking down.&nbsp; Not good.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">As you mull the bad news, you fall asleep, waking only to the sound of rush and panic. Your eyes barely open to reveal a team of technicians surrounding you.&nbsp; One has two silver paddles pressed to your chest and yells, "Clear!"&nbsp; At that moment you realize that he's going to electrocute your, jolting you with a shock in order to restart your heart.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Emotionally, you know that the same electricity of which you were warned is approaching, and that the very same danger about which your parents wagged their fingers is about to send its power through you.&nbsp; It's scary. You've never done it.&nbsp; Yet rationally, you know that if the doctor <i>doesn't</i> do it, that's it.&nbsp; The end.&nbsp; Your heart won't restart.&nbsp; Your organs won't be restored to their previous vigor.&nbsp; Your whole system will break down -- for good.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">I don't blame people for harboring fear.&nbsp; I do blame people for harboring <i>irrational</i> fear, especially when their entire system is about to break down -- for good.&nbsp; At that point, you have no choice but to go with the effective option, because your survival depends on it.&nbsp; The question is whether you can overcome the irrational fear to get to the effective solution.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Especially when the only man holding the paddles happens to be a Republican.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">For more on Rob Frankel's branding, visit http://www.RobFrankel.com</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/gjhc/~4/VNjKmhUnu_c" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Rob Frankelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11321315004780963386noreply@blogger.com0http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-defibrillator.html